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How To Make Your Dreams Come True

Several months ago I read Felecia Day’s Book, you are never weird on the internet (Almost). It was a good read and I would very much recommend it! While I was reading the book there was part that really stood out to me. In the book she joins up with a group of ladies each week to talk about goals and what they are doing to get them done. After listening to her struggles being in the group, but how ultimately is lead to great things, I had to have one of my own!

I pitched the idea to a few of my friends that had also read the book and they were all on board! This group has been AMAZING!
Since the creation of what we call SASSY I have:

Finished 3 business books in a month Worked my way up to meditating for 10 min a day Finally finished a huge project I had been putting off Started Decluttering my whole life Lost 7 pounds Got so many adulting tasks done early! dentist appointment, car fixes/registration, taxes, Stopped putting things off until last minute Set some serious, amazing, and scary deadlines that I am so excited to get to! Plus lots of little odds and ends I would have put off if no one was watching

Sounds pretty awesome, right?

You totally want one too, right?

Here is how to make your own!

First, Get your crew

You need to gather a few friends or people you know who are ready to commit to improving. The people in this group is really crucial because the whole point is to help hold each other accountable. DO NOT try to force anyone to join. If someone doesn’t seem on board or joins and doesn’t participate, it is a good sign they aren’t ready or just don’t care. You do not want these people in your group. They will be a lot more effort to encourage because there heart is not in it, so don’t even bother until they are ready. If you are unsure, just give people the option and let them get a feel for it before committing. They can always leave and come back when they are ready!

Next, Create a system

You need a way to track your progress and set your goals. For my group I created a spreadsheet and gave us all a tab. We write our weekly goals on the main page of the spread sheet for everyone to see and keep tabs on (get it, tabs! hahahahha!) Our personal tabs we organize how we like and make, plan, and track personal progress. This is also where I keep my info for my 12 months of habits (Find out how I do that here) Since I like you guys so much I created a blank version of the spreadsheet we use for you to download and use in your group! Feel free to customize it and make big amazing plans!

Plan some goals

Now that you have set up a system and have your crew it is time to do the making dreams come true part of all of this!

Step one: Brainstorm
Use the brainstorm section of the spreadsheet to think of all that stuff you want to get done. You can really go wild here since it is just brainstorming, list everything! Write down big goals, small goals, silly goals, anything that you truly want to do or have been wanting to try. Nothing is too crazy for this part of the list.

Step 2: Pick Top Goals
Look over your big list and pick the first few you would like to start off with. They don’t have to be the most important items on your list, you will eventually get to all of them eventually if your interest in them continues so don’t stress out about what ones you pick. For me I picked the ones that excited me the most at the time because I had the momentum to get started on them. Don’t get too crazy ambitious, starting off with 2 or 3 is a fantastic start, and you can always add more later once you have made some progress on your first few.

Step 3: Easy Small Steps
One at a time go over each of the items you chose to focus on first, and create a to do list or step by step plan. Each step should be something that on it’s own seems super easy to do. For example Mediation was one of the first goals I picked. So I decided to start small and try to meditate for 1 min each day for a month. The second month I would add a minute. I would keep adding minutes each month until I got to the 10 that initially seemed too difficult. Because the steps broken up so small they were not intimidating at all. I even accomplished my goal in a third of the time I had planned because after getting started I wanted more and more!

Step 4: Make them measurable and/or Set a deadline
Now that you have a plan for your tasks find a measurable way to track them or lay out all the little steps and set your deadline. Using meditation as an example again, my measurable number was 1 minute, 5 days a week, so my month total for this month would have been 23 because there are 23 weekdays this month. If your task doesn’t have a way to have a measurable number you can simply put Y/N in this section. Like for the goal “Do my taxes” you could put the number for the steps you broke is into, or just consider it Completed or Not. Figure this out for each of your goals you are focusing on.

Once you have your goals and the measurable numbers for them put it in the “Everyone” tab of the spreadsheet.
You could also make a list of all the smaller steps for the week and list them in the “Everyone” tab. It depends on what works out better for your group. We do a combination of both.

Step 5: Track it & Win at life!
This is the easy one, and the hardest one! Now is when you get to work on those goals! Each month/week track how close you got to that measurable number from step 4. Little by little you will get there with the plan you have created and make those dreams come true!

Weekly check ins

We created a Facebook group to do a weekly check in, but anything where you can all check in and post will work. Each week one of us will post what she accomplished from her to do list. Then she will post her to do list for the next week. Sometimes we ask funny little questions too, to liven up the posts. Posting your list on Facebook may seem a little excessive because you already have all these lists on the spread sheet, but don’t skip this part of the process! This is where you really feel like you are being held accountable because everyone will read what you actually got done and what you plan on getting done each week. This is also a great reality check if you tend to just copy paste unfinished stuff over to the next week, because you have to post your original list and how much of it you got done.

Here is an example of what one of my posts looks like:

I am getting a little ambitious with how much I want to do this week so we will see how that goes!

Monthly call

Another way we hold each other accountable is with a monthly video call. It is a lot more incentive to do your work if you are going to have to look your friends in the eyes and tell them you got lazy and decided to just eat ice cream instead. After all they are all working hard you don’t want to be the one that isn’t getting anything done each week. These are usually pretty fun and informative because we look back at the previous month’s to dos and see how much we all got done. I am always surprised by this! Week to week is always feel like I am not getting a whole lot done, but when I look back at the whole month it is always so much more than I thought.

Here is how we lay out our meetings.

Someone decides to go first and answers each of these questions:What was your Low of the month? What was your High of the month? What is something that you learned?

Once we answer the questions we go over what we got done and what we purged/moved to the next month.
We like the idea of saying moved/purged because it is not that we failed to do these tasks, it is we realized we didn’t need to do then, or decided to do them the next week. It is a lot less discouraging than being upset about the list of items we just didn’t get to that month.

Overall starting this SASSY group has been a fantastic motivator, and really help me get closer to my friends. Seeing that they all have their own things they are struggling with and need some cheering has made me understand them so much better. I would highly recommend starting a group of your own!

Below is the button for the blank worksheet so you can set up a group of your own!